Mark Twain: A Biography, by Albert Bigelow Paine

Chapter XCIII

The Real Colonel Sellers-Golden Days

There are bound to be vexations, flies in the ointment, as we say. It was Warner who conferred the name of Eschol
Sellers on the chief figure of the collaborated novel. Warner had known it as the name of an obscure person, or perhaps
he had only heard of it. At all events, it seemed a good one for the character and had been adopted. But behold, the
book had been issued but a little while when there rose “out of the vasty deeps” a genuine Eschol Sellers, who was a
very respectable person. He was a stout, prosperous-looking man, gray and about fifty-five years old. He came into the
American Publishing Company offices and asked permission to look at the book. Mr. Bliss was out at the moment, but
presently arrived. The visitor rose and introduced himself.

“My name is Eschol Sellers,” he said. “You have used it in one of your publications. It has brought upon me a lot of
ridicule. My people wish me to sue you for $10,000 damages.”

He had documents to prove his identity, and there was only one thing to be done; he must be satisfied. Bliss agreed
to recall as many of the offending volumes as possible and change the name on the plates. He contacted the authors, and
the name Beriah was substituted for the offending Eschol. It turned out that the real Sellers family was a large one,
and that the given name Eschol was not uncommon in its several branches. This particular Eschol Sellers, curiously
enough, was an inventor and a promoter, though of a much more substantial sort than his fiction namesake. He was also a
painter of considerable merit, a writer and an antiquarian. He was said to have been a grandson of the famous painter,
Rembrandt Peale.

Clemens vowed that he would not lecture in America that winter. The irrepressible Redpath besieged him as usual, and
at the end of January Clemens telegraphed him, as he thought, finally. Following it with a letter of explanation, he
added:

“I said to her, ‘There isn’t money enough in America to hire me to leave you for one day.’”

But Redpath was a persistent devil. He used arguments and held out inducements which even Mrs. Clemens thought
should not be resisted, and Clemens yielded from time to time, and gave a lecture here and there during February.
Finally, on the 3d of March (1879.) he telegraphed his tormentor:

“Why don’t you congratulate me? I never expect to stand on a lecture platform again after Thursday night.”

Howells tells delightfully of a visit which he and Aldrich paid to Hartford just at this period. Aldrich went to
visit Clemens and Howells to visit Charles Dudley Warner, Clemens coming as far as Springfield to welcome them.

In the good-fellowship of that cordial neighborhood we had two such days as the aging sun no longer shines on in his
round. There was constant running in and out of friendly houses where the lively hosts and guests called one another by
their Christian names or nicknames, and no such vain ceremony as knocking or ringing at doors. Clemens was then
building the stately mansion in which he satisfied his love of magnificence as if it had been another sealskin coat,
and he was at the crest of the prosperity which enabled him to humor every whim or extravagance.

Howells tells how Clemens dilated on the advantages of subscription sale over the usual methods of publication, and
urged the two Boston authors to prepare something which canvassers could handle.

“Why, any other means of bringing out a book is privately printing it,” he declared, and added that his subscription
books in Bliss’s hands sold right along, “just like the Bible.”

On the way back to Boston Howells and Aldrich planned a subscription book which would sell straight along, like the
Bible. It was to be called “Twelve Memorable Murders.” They had dreamed two or three fortunes by the time they had
reached Boston, but the project ended there.

“We never killed a single soul,” Howells said once to the writer of this memoir.

Clemens was always urging Howells to visit him after that. He offered all sorts of inducements.

You will find us the most reasonable people in the world. We had thought of precipitating upon you, George Warner
and his wife one day, Twichell and his jewel of a wife another day, and Charles Perkins and wife another. Only those —
simply members of our family they are. But I’ll close the door against them all, which will “fix” all of the lot except
Twichell, who will no more hesitate to climb in the back window than nothing.

And you shall go to bed when you please, get up when you please, talk when you please, read when you please.

A little later he was urging Howells or Aldrich, or both of them; to come to Hartford to live.

Mr. Hall, who lives in the house next to Mrs. Stowe’s (just where we drive in to go to our new house), will sell for
$16,000 or $17,000. You can do your work just as well here as in Cambridge, can’t you? Come! Will one of you boys buy
that house? Now, say yes.

Certainly those were golden, blessed days, and perhaps, as Howells says, the sun does not shine on their like any
more — not in Hartford, at least, for the old group that made them no longer assembles there. Hartford about this time
became a sort of shrine for all literary visitors, and for other notables as well, whether of America or from overseas.
It was the half-way place between Boston and New York, and pilgrims going in either direction rested there. It is said
that travelers arriving in America, were apt to remember two things they wished to see: Niagara Falls and Mark Twain.
But the Falls had no such recent advertising advantage as that spectacular success in London. Visitors were apt to
begin in Hartford.

Howells went with considerable frequency after that, or rather with regularity, twice a year, or oftener, and his
coming was always hailed with great rejoicing. They visited and ate around at one place and another among that pleasant
circle of friends. But they were happiest afterward together, Clemens smoking continually, “soothing his tense nerves
with a mild hot Scotch,” says Howells, “while we both talked, and talked, and tasked of everything in the heavens and
on the earth, and the waters under the earth. After two days of this talk I would come away hollow, realizing myself
best in the image of one of those locust-shells which you find sticking to the bark of trees at the end of summer.”
Sometimes Clemens told the story of his early life, “the inexhaustible, the fairy, the Arabian Nights story, which I
could never tire of even when it began to be told over again.”